John Fregonese

John has been a planner for 37 years. He has built a reputation for his ability to energize communities around their shared vision.

He works with communities to develop prioritized strategies and actions that enable their vision to take shape through an actionable plan. The mark of John’s leadership is a plan that is successfully implemented at the city or regional scale and transitions into projects at the community or neighborhood scale. John is known for his work in Portland, where he served as the planning director for five years at Metro, and was the primary author of Metro 2040.

Since founding Fregonese Associates in 1997, John has led or taken part in nationally significant regional plans, including the Compass Blueprint Growth Vision for the Southern California Association of Governments, Envision Utah, the Sustainable Places Project in Austin, Louisiana Speaks and Sustainable Development for the Louisiana Coast Handbook. John also led the East Baton Rouge Parish Comprehensive Plan, a project that spurred unprecedented public involvement in the Baton Rouge area, particularly from under-represented groups. Since its adoption, the plan is beginning to take form in a number of planned infill developments and transit improvements. John is currently leading Heartland 2050, a regional planning process in Omaha, Nebraska

In addition to large regional projects, John also has a long and successful track record of citywide comprehensive plans, downtown and small area planning in cities and communities of all sizes across the country. Currently he is a lead consultant for the Beaverton Creekside District Master Plan (Beaverton, Oregon) and the Lafourche Parish Comprehensive Resiliency Plan (Louisiana). Recently John led the Beaverton Civic Plan (Beaverton, Oregon), the Dallas TOD station area planning project (Dallas, Texas), and PLANitULSA, a comprehensive plan for Tulsa, Oklahoma. The Dallas TOD project, which included plans for neighborhoods near seven DART light rail stations, spurred the construction of four mixed use buildings and received an APA award. PLANitULSA is currently being implemented by the city. John has also led planning projects for Pointe Coupee, West Feliciana and East Feliciana Parishes in Louisiana; Denver, Colorado; Dallas and Waco, Texas; Chicago, Illinois; and small area plans and corridors including Beaverton, Hillsboro, and the Barbur Boulevard and McLoughlin Corridor in the Portland metro region.